Three Tapes

You know how it is.

What it's like.

You're in your private office, surrounded by tall metal filing cabinets of various colors, some bright, some faded.

As you stand at one, casually flipping through the folder tabs, suddenly you'll feel a little earthquake and hear one of the dusty old grey cabinets in the back corner shaking about. You notice that a drawer has slid out, and a folder popped up a few inches.

So taking a few steps, you reach and pull that file out and peruse.

You had forgotten all about this one!

~

This happened to me tonight.

Wendy came home not feeling all that great. Stressed out from work and just generally in need of some TLC. She verbally warned me, too, which was great, because that way I was able to snatch my off my Jerk Cap and put on the Loving Husband Hat without the usual delay that it takes me to realize that she needs TLC and she needs it now.

Later she mentioned how she'd wished there was gas in her car, so as she took a shower, I snuck out to go fill up her vehicle.

Driving out, I punched the radio to my pre-sets, and Rock 105.3 wasn't playing a song that was very appealing, so I punched another button. Jack FM I guess, but the song was pretty blah. Punch. Country music. Okay I'll give this a try.

It felt kind of warm in the car, because though it was evening now, it had been rather hot today, and so I rolled down the window.

As soon as the balmy evening air hit me, combined with the country music song, I was suddenly transported back in time with very clear memories of an adventure I'd once had.

Kind of cool how the brain is made to do that, isn't it? Sometimes it's a smell that will shake open a dusty memory. Or a sound.

So that was a pretty pleasant excursion out tonight to go get Wendy's car filled with petrol. Even though the first station I went to, Valero, was orange-coned off with all pumps "out of order". That sucked. It was okay, though, because I was pleasantly reliving the memory of my long ago adventure.

~

The adventure that I'd recalled?

A friend in the congregation, Ralph (pronounced Rayfe) Wojciechowska (spelling?) told me that he was going to drive to Phoenix, Arizona, and would I like to accompany him.

At the time I lived in the East Bay part of the San Francisco Bay Area, Hayward to be precise. At the time that Ralph asked, I know I was still living at home with my parents, and I was probably on a year-long period of unemployment, or else it was simply summer vacation from school.

There were a few catches to the offer, which gave me pause, and so I took a couple days to decide.

First, it was evident that I was not simply company for the trip, but also a means to pay half the fuel costs. He drove something like an old (a very old) 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner, a big old rattly muscle car in primer grey.

Second catch: There was no air conditioning in this vehicle. We would be driving to Phoenix. Arizona. Yeah, that Phoenix.

Third catch: Well, this wasn't a catch, but rather a "revelation" that occurred pretty early in the trip. (I did end up accepting the offer). His radio didn't work and he only had three cassette tapes to play. All country. Country music. And yes, that was quite a revelation.

Digressing slightly, I made the decision to go because it sounded like an adventure.

Ralph was taking his vacation week to visit his old friends from his old Diesel Mechanics school in Phoenix, from which he'd graduated a few years previously. I'd never been on at trip that far before (Bay Area to Los Angeles, then a left turn without stopping clear over to Phoenix.)

We drove without stopping to rest through the day and then through the night so that we arrived in Phoenix' hot desert surroundings while the sun was just beginning to rise.

Now it's time to get to the point.

At the time I did not care for country music. I was into what we called "Soul" which today I guess you'd call R & B.

To me, country music was white cracker "lynching music" that smacked of bigotry and hatred. That assessment was probably not accurate, but I was not long out of high school and at that age and at that time it was considered appropriate to hate something. Country music was my hated thing of choice.

Well we can FF this to the end and note that after several days and countless hours and many long miles, I came away with a real love for country music.

Three tapes. George Strait. Rosanne Cash. And another Rosanne Cash tape.

Over and over and over again.

So that was a lesson learned!

~

I applied that lesson later on when some guys in the congregation invited me to my first rock concert at an arena.

The Who.

So having learned the value of indoctrination, I borrowed some of their record albums and began to condition my brain to enjoy the music and lyrics.

~

One more story that's part of the memory that came back to me tonight.

Ralph was loving his visit with these people, worldly people, a young couple and their little crying toddler.

They were nice, actually.  That Toddler knew the value of manipulation through noisy wailing and tears, though.  He ruled.

Well, we were hanging out in the garage during the day in a Phoenix neighborhood.  I was hoping we could go see the sights of Phoenix.  Maybe hit the mall.  Drive downtown.  See some architecture.  The zoo, maybe!

Alas, no.

All they wanted to do was drink beer.

Ralph's younger brother came over.  He was going to that same Diesel Mechanics school that Ralph had attended.

Some other guy from the neighborhood was over.

They're all sitting in lawn chairs in the garage, in the shade, drinking beer.

Budweiser beer.

There was a slight stir of adventure when we went on a "beer run".

Drove down to the store, got another 12-pack of Bud.

So boring. So incredibly boring.

I was no beer drinker, and I don't think I liked Budweiser even if I was a beer drinker.

So I called my brother Paul back in the Bay Area and begged him for Brandon's phone number.  Brandon was a friend of Paul's and an acquaintance of mine who had moved to Phoenix.

On the phone Brandon listened to my suggestion, which was basically "come pick me up and take me away from here and let's go see stuff".

He wasn't really interested.

So now I was really stuck.  Stuck sitting around with a bunch of guys who wanted to do nothing else but sit around and drink beer.

Well, you know what happened?

I found a solution.

Now I know, and have known since that fateful trip, that fateful day, the answer to the following philosophical question:

What do you do when you have no vehicle and you're with a bunch of people who just want to sit around and drink beer?

The answer:

Drink some of the beer.

Problem was solved and I had a great day.

~

About Ralph Wojciechowska:  that's not his real name.  It's pretty close, but I changed it enough so that no one could google his last name and look this stuff up.

That little toddler of his friends' is no doubt all grown up now and either a member of an organized crime syndicate (the mafia is in Phoenix, right?) or else an upstanding pillar of Phoenix society.  Either way, I don't want them to know that I strongly implied that the little toddler ruled that household.